Kishore Singh: Partying my drive away

PEOPLE LIKE US

It was 10.30 last night when my wife and I walked into the Café Coffee Day outlet in New Friends Colony where, having ordered our cappuccinos and a brownie to share, we settled down in the sofas with our books. Most people prefer their nightcap and reading in bed, but the whole of this week my wife and I have been checking out the quality of caffeine and lighting across city cafes — not because we’d rather not be home, but because our little teenager, who began college this summer, finds herself being invited to parties she can’t refuse.

As parents, we figure we have limited choices. “You could say no,” I tested the obvious one out with my daughter. “And not make any new friends,” she retorted, knowing full well the cache I place on having an adequate social life. Therefore: touché! We could opt to have her friends pick and drop her back, but the rate at which the young in this city are driving over people rather than on roads, I’d worry (and nag) more while sitting at home. And booking her with an off-duty driver would mean having to send the cook as a chaperone, which would make us unpopular with both my daughter and the cook. Clearly, the only feasible option till she got herself a driving licence would be to drop her off and pick her up while we hung around in the neighbourhood, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the parties started in time.

The first time, my daughter said there was no point in reaching her friend’s place before ten, which is when the rest of her gang expected to get there, so my wife and I said we’d treat ourselves to a dinner date at Pizza Hut in Greater Kailash. But you get through a pizza pretty quickly, and since the pizzeria does not serve coffee, we walked across to McDonald’s for our paper cups of Georgia, but even that was soon over, so we snoozed in the car just like chauffeurs do, watching other children come and go, smoke and smooch, while we waited for our daughter to make an appearance.

At least she had the grace to say thank you.The following evening I made sure to carry a flask of coffee, some cookies and a book, but a car light isn’t sufficient to read the fine print in a Ruth Rendell thriller, so I had to opt for an uncomfortable stool in a café in Khan Market where the coffee (you can’t carry your own) was awful and the music loud, and by the time I picked up my daughter and went to bed, I had a backache and a headache.

When I complained, my wife said all right, all right, she’d keep me company the next time, which since it was sooner than she expected, got her into a temper, so we spent the evening not talking to each other but only drinking coffee, as a result of which she had acidity. The only effect the coffee had on me was to turn me into an insomniac. Because I couldn’t sleep at all at night, I was sleepy all through the following day, requiring more coffee to stay awake, which has clearly made me a caffeine junkie, with crabbiness as a side-effect.

Now here we were at CCD, nodding off over our books, when the lads at the counter started to dim the lights, hoping we’d clear out sooner rather than later. I can take a hint as well as any, and paid up to leave, to find the colony gates had shut, and I no longer knew how to get to my daughter to take her home.

Her partying has got to stop.